Class Struggle 93

February-March 2011

Brief Stuff
Autocracy and Autism
In times of crisis the shit floats to the top and in Christchurch its called liquefaction. In a climate of shock and fear for 1000s of those who have lived with aftershocks for 6 months this climate is being exploited by the capitalists to rush through their rightwing agenda. (see Disaster Capitalism Downunder). A new Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority has been created by the NACT government to ride roughshod over the Christchurch City Council and disenfranchise the people of Christchurch from any democratic participation in how Christchurch will be rebuilt. This is the same NACT ploy used to sack the Canterbury Regional Council to give farmers relatively free access to water at the expense of the Canterbury townies. Now Christchurch gets the same treatment. CCC is effectively sacked and replaced by Gerry Brownlee and a Cabinet Committee. This is the rampant autocracy of Brownlee on behalf of the Canterbury gentry and NZ finance capital. Central city is in lockdown with armed checkpoints. The cowboy wreckers are pulling down buildings without consents or notifying owners. Valuable contents have gone missing. Small business owners have demonstrated against being locked out of their premises for over a month. To divert the people of Christchurch from the NACT demolition job of asset stripping Christchurch, the usual rightwing ploy of fear mongering about a breakdown of law and order is used as a smokescreen. What better than to create a panic about looters. In every crisis situation where workers need food they raid supermarkets and are labelled looters. The city is flooded with Army checkpoints and Aussie cops were imported to patrol the suburbs. The Eastern suburbs were left without water, electricity and toilets for weeks. When young people organised to to the aid of families in the Eastern Suburbs they were profiled and warned off by cops. Then a young man is arrested for stealing light bulbs. 25-year-old Cornelius Arie Smith-Voorkamp is beaten up by cops. Up pops rightwing shockjock Michael Lhaws on Radio Live to amp up the fear and hysteria. This man should be locked up he says. Being beaten up is natural

justice. Wanted, Vigilantes. Turns out the young man has Aspergers Syndrome with a fixation on light bulbs which he took from an abandoned building. Autism is no excuse says Michael Lhaws. Brian Edwards rushes to the young mans defence but manages to treat autism as some sort of social disability. What is worse shock jock or patronising liberal? Young man has Lhaws sussed. He is on Radio Live yet he is not alive. Seems this young man was keeping his cool and behaving rationally compared to the Autocracy, the shock jocks and the limp liberals, who each in their own way exploit the shock, the social disability and social chaos which disenfranchises the working people of Christchurch while their assets are seriously looted. We say that the working people of Christchurch need to organise in their localities and their unions to build their own Christchurch, joining forces with the workers who are rebuilding the infrastructure to take control of the planning and rebuilding of the facilities and resources they need and refusing to be manipulated and managed by the NACT machine in what is going to be a furious showdown election campaign. Working class Christchurch does not want to become a poster child for the NACTS disaster capitalism. The workers of Christchurch need to organise to take control of their city from the capitalist asset strippers. They could start by making an inventory of the infrastructure and services to identify the real looters.

Japan Quake Aftermath

A natural disaster is a ratio of one 1 part nature and up to 10 parts social on the Karl Marx scale. Nothing could prevent the earthquake in Japan of 9 on the Richter scale, nor the massive Tsunami that followed. But a lot could be done to prevent its effects on the human population. Most of the death toll can be put down to the social contribution of living in a capitalist society. Towns built on the coast, in many cases near or even below normal water level. So while many of the high rise buildings in the cities are built to withstand earthquakes, in the regions, inadequate sea walls, poor location and design of dwellings contributed to most deaths. As a result 10s of thousands have perished. Many more may yet perish if the Fukushima nuclear power station built to withstand big earthquakes but not a 10 meter Tsunami suffers a meltdown and

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contaminates Japan and much of the Northern Hemisphere with nuclear fallout. Thus on the Karl Marx scale, Christchurch, NZ had a 7.1 quake in September 2010 that caused no deaths. This would be rated as 1/2 since most of the destruction was to buildings and infrastructure and was not serious. However, this was followed by a 6.3 quake in February this year which killed around 200 when two multi-story buildings, and a number of shop frontages crashed into the streets. There was also much more damage to the physical infrastructure and buildings. This quake might rate at 1/4. Much worse and possibly a 1/8 was the Haiti Earthquake of 2009 also a 7.1 but where 230,000 perished due to a history of colonisation that left poorly built dwellings incapable of withstanding even a moderate earthquake even without Tsunamis or meltdowns of nuclear power stations. We have yet to see what total death and destruction has been wrought by the Japanese quake on Japanese society and the wider world. As comrade Tyashi of the new wave in India puts it: natural calamities are essentially rooted in man-made factors....destruction of environment for blind profits at the hands of capitalists and the states under them, is the chief contributory factor to these calamities....but the working and toiling masses are the worst sufferer under their axe...natural calamities hit hard at the heads of ruling classes, as they expose the class contradictions in the given society to the core....we hope that Tsunami in Japan would give an opportunity to the workers and poor there to see that capitalist Japan does not care about them at all.....and thus they must overthrow the power of capitalists, and establish their own rule to deal effectively with such calamities...we call upon the Japanese working class to turn the tsunami over to the ruling class of capitalists...let their regime be shaken by powerful jolts of a proletarian revolution...

February-March 2011
WWGs report, and the likelihood that in the long term the recommended welfare reforms could result in a higher but less easily visible toll of casualties. At a time of high unemployment attributable entirely to the unresolved global economic crisis, the WWGs recommendations set the ambitious target of at least 100,000 fewer working age people receiving welfare by 2021 Needless to say, the measures recommended to achieve this goal are thoroughly draconian, and include intensive case management of Job Seekers (as all beneficiaries including sole parents and invalids are to be designated) with punitive sanctions for those who seek but fail to find non-existent employment: Benefit cuts and stand-downs and forced labour are the order of the day. In the preamble the WWG report predictably claims, Our welfare system has major deficiencies that need to be corrected Substitute the word report for welfare system and their claim would be valid. A search of the report in electronic pdf file yields zero results for certain words with obvious relevance, namely recession, depression or financial crisis. This glaring omission cannot be explained by culpable ignorance or naivety on the groups part, as the report does at one point fleetingly refer to the global crisis, trivializing it as an economic downturn which it blithely assume will be temporary. Nowhere do they discuss whether such optimism is warranted, nor do they address its implications, which if adequately considered would make a mockery of their ideological premises; which is that demand for jobs will generate a supply of jobs. They merely recommend that the government undertakes an investigation into whether labour market barriers to employment need to be addressed as part of a strategy to reduce benefit dependency. This attests to its disgraceful failure to make that very investigation necessary to formulate meaningful recommendations, and thus implicitly testifies to its ideological blindness. The real significance of this gross omission is as follows: By pretending that no economic crisis has occurred it becomes unnecessary to blame the governments bosom-friends, the finance capitalists, for the widespread misery they have caused, and equally unnecessary to correctly identify the crisis as the real cause of the high levels of welfare dependency that the WWG so self-righteously deplores- and condemns. Instead, the wrath of the working class at being subjected to wage & employment cuts is diverted to

Welfare demolition job

On February 22nd, the day the second Christchurch Earthquake struck, Paula Bennetts Welfare Working Group (WWG) released its recommendations, which were greeted with a lively and well attended protest demonstration at the Henderson office of Work and Income in Auckland. The more spectacular of the two catastrophes of course received far greater attention from the media, despite the momentousness of the

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the convenient scapegoats in the form of the crisis hardest-hit victims. Thus does the working class become divided and weakened at a time when in angry unity it could rise up to threaten the abusive power of its oppressors. More than just diverting the blame for the crisis onto its victims, the WWGs recommendations will serve very effectively to divert the cost of the crisis onto the working class as a whole. When 100 000 sole parents and invalids are goaded into the labour market they will be competing for employment with an army of former government employees laid off by cuts just announced to the civil service. The threat of eviction if not starvation will force them to accept whatever wage employers care to offer, however low, and crisis- hit employers will be to intent on defending their threatened profits at anyones expense but their own. So wages will be driven down to maintain bosses profits. That this is the true purpose of welfare reform is borne out by other such anti-worker legislation as the 90-day Fire-at-Will Act. Further evidence that the WWGs recommendations are tailored to suit the corporate agenda is that along with the radically fundamental reform of placing all claimants on a Job Seeker benefit goes the contracting out of welfare services to private and community, not-for-profit sector agencies to deliver employment services. When the community has been devastated (earthquakelike) by other neo-liberal cutbacks, that leaves the field clear for such multi-national players as Lockheed -Martin, which has extended its tentacles all over the US welfare system. Oops, this overlooks the Iwi agencies whom, considering the disproportionate representation of Maori amongst the unemployed, are to be assigned a major role in achieving the aforementioned target of reduction by 100,000. Amongst the most maniacally single-minded of the WWGs work-focused recommendations (albeit only

February-March 2011
by a majority) is the one that a work test in the case of parents having an additional child while on welfare should be aligned with paid parental leave provisions (when the youngest child reaches 14 weeks). This despite paying lip service elsewhere to identify[ing] the likely impact of welfare reform on the well-being of children. That WWG is apparently unaware after months of consultation that the likely impact has already been identified by concerned professionals (otherwise it could never have considered such a proposal) is proof that it has been selective in its consultation. Perhaps this last proposal was calculated to make John Key look benign in comparison when he publicly rejected it. With respect to the last recommendation, the WWG covers its backside by recommending that the current Taskforce on Early Childhood Education consider ways to improve the availability and affordability of childcare and early childhood education services for lower paid families and people on welfare, including reprioritising some of the existing ECE expenditure. True to its real agenda, Keys government has already responded ever so benignly to this the only commendable recommendation by slashing the funding of ECE with the effect of making childcare services unaffordable to those who will be coerced into using them. On top of punitive sanctions against alleged malingerers there is intrusive prying into domestic affairs, with for example sanctions against mothers who become pregnant while receiving a benefit. Before the last election the corporate media were trumpeting the accusatory and disparaging slogan of Nanny State in their eagerness to get the NatActs elected. Their deafening silence now is hardly attributable to natural disasters. The hated nanny state has been heavyed out of the way by the big Daddy state. For the working class it has become a harsh, puritanical and Calvinistic Victorian patriarch, with values that match its pure Victorian throwback dog eat dog economic policies.

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February-March 2011

Disaster Capitalism Downunder

Capitalist disasters
The common broad left response to disasters such as the recent Christchurch 6.3 quake that has wrecked many buildings and will probably have a death toll of over 200 people, is that of Disaster Capitalism as popularised by Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine. This argues that today capitalism survives by using shocks to subdue the populations and impose controls which allow it to grab larger and larger shares of scarce resources and increase its share of income. Usually it it is traced back to the onset of the free-market neoliberal project led by the US from the 1970s using aggressive methods of imposing tough conditions on developing countries forcing them to deregulate and sell their assets to predatory global corporates. The extreme expression of neo-liberal globalisation was the military invasion beginning with Indonesia and Vietnam in the 1960s right through to Iraq and Afghanistan today, and the use of similar methods to impose military rule to deal with natural disasters such as that of Hurricane Katrina. While neo-liberalism is a set of policies imposed often by military interventions, it is not a project that implies any real change in the way capitalism operates. Capitalism creates the disasters that it then uses to its own advantage. Millions were killed in Indonesia and Vietnam between 1965 and 1975, and more millions in Iraq and the Af/Pak wars today.

Moreover these disasters go way back to capitalisms origins. Haitis recent earthquake was the same size as Christchurch 7.1 in September last year, but while noone died in Christchurch, it killed thousands in Haiti because of the extreme poverty due to its long history of colonial and neo-colonial occupation. So the neo-liberal project is not a new project but the response of global capitalism to grab resources cheaply to counter its falling profits. The regimes that imposed neo-liberal policies were responding to to need to boost their profits by any means necessary so that their capitalist system could survive.

The problem is capitalism

The problem is capitalism and its global crises not some aberration caused by elite greed. Neo-liberalism is no more than the response of the international ruling class to the end of the period of accumulation called the post-war boom. A long boom that itself was the product of the massive disasters of the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Second World War. Depression and War was the response of capitalism to the crisis of falling profits following the First World War. Since the 1970s international capitalism has imposed a neo-liberal combination of depressions and wars on the developing world to try to restore the rate of profit globally. NZ has moved in this direction since 1984. The end of the post war boom also meant the end to the protected local economy sustained by booming export prices. NZ capitalism also suffered a decline in

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profitability. Neo-liberalism in NZ was driven by the Labour Party and the National Party in the interests of a new capitalist landowning gentry, speculators and banksters all parasites on the backs of the working class to monopolise land, water and cheap labour, in an attempt to restore profitability. Disaster capitalism is simply the parasitic ruling class applying the logic of capital to devalue, destroy and revalue capital to raise profits. Part of the devaluing and destruction is the underfunding of urban growth and the failure to plan for the aftermath of natural disasters such as earthquakes. So instead of minimising the harm of natural disasters capitalism exploits them to con workers into letting them grab what is left of cheap labour and natural resources while they, the workers, are supposed to feel good about it. So as with everything to do with capitalism, it is the capitalists who survive while the workers pay the price of the disasters. [see article on the Japans natural disaster].

February-March 2011
managers in WINZ [Work and Income NZ] to move around the country into low paid shitty jobs or be judged as welfare scroungers.

Workers reply to disaster

To pay for this disaster we have to kick out the NACT [National Party and ACT Party coalition] regime, take back the $15 billion tax cuts to the rich, impose a capital gains tax on all the speculators, and borrow to compensate the victims of the quake fully, set in motion a public works building program to rebuild Christchurch around the needs of its working class community, in particular its health and safety, and not the interests of the capitalist class. But neither party of the ruling class, National or Labour, will do this. Only a government that represents the interests of the working class can do this. The Christchurch working class needs to organise around its union base to build its own response to the quake and challenge the top-down ruling class management of this disaster. Maybe that way there will be a groundswell of a different sort that builds a working class social movement capable of ending NZs capitalist disaster story and putting working people into power.

The Christchurch quake

The Christchurch earthquake needs to be seen in this context. Calling it a national disaster and imposing a national emergency is to cynically exploit peoples humanity so that the working poor pay for the aftermath of this disaster. Of course people want to help, it is instinctive to pull together in an emergency as a matter of self-preservation. But this becomes exploited by the ruling class to con workers into offering their free labour in the re-building of Christchurch for the benefit of capitalism. Sam Mahons partner had it right. If Christchurch had been flattened, I wonder what theyd build first. A church or a bank? ['The Broken Pieces of our Hearts', Sunday Star-Times, 27 Feb 11]. A special tax to pay for the rebuilding is a regressive move to get us all to pay for this disaster and soften us up to pay for all the other coming disasters that are caused by capitalisms drive to exploit our labour and the resources of nature to the limit. The Christchurch quake is part of this process of the struggle over capitalisms survival, as the capitalist class will benefit from the rebuilding of Christchurch, witness the support rebuilding Christchurch business campaign, while the poor will suffer big losses in living standards, jobs, education, and be hounded by the

A National Emergency that rescues the NACT regime

The earthquake is good news for the NACT regime all round. It concentrates capitalisms destructive forces under the guise of nature and speeds up the regimes plans to monopolise land and labour in NZ. The regime can use it to build support for their policies of concentrating and centralising NZ assets in the hands of international corporate capital. PM John Key has estimated that it may take $20 billion to rebuild Christchurch. The cost of the rebuilding will cut 6% from economic growth. What he really means is that physical and human capital will be destroyed on a huge scale. But while the workers will suffer a major destruction of their living standards, monopoly capital will liquidate and restructure, i.e., buy up devalued physical assets and labor cheaply and pocket huge profits.

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February-March 2011

Liquefaction liquidates labour and capital values

The estimated 125,000 jobs losses in Christchurch means a big outflow of unemployed into the national floating reserve pool of labour. Thousands are already relocating without any instruction from WINZ. Welfare Razor Gang policies will force thousands more onto the job market. So thats a huge increase in the supply of labor that will force a downward pressure on wages that no existing bureaucratised union can fight. As for recapitalising the land and buildings of Christchurch, $15 billion will come from national and local body disaster insurance and $5 billion from extra taxes, all of which are, in the last analysis, deducted from the value produced by workers at the expense of their income share. Christchurch will revert to a service centre for agriculture, tourism and heritage. Other industry will migrate north and across the Tasman to Australia or Asia as it has been doing for years.

Christchurch is a microcosm of capital liquidation and restructuring

Years of underfunding and deregulation has led to much destruction of physical and human capital. The official enquiries set in motion after the earthquake will reveal how much the inadequate earthquake standards and building on reclaimed land contributed to the destruction. But it affords a perfect opportunity for capital to devalue and restructure rapidly. Working class housing stock is destroyed and workers thrown onto the scrap heap. Old substandard building stock is destroyed and its insurance value becomes a liquid fund for reinvestment and relocation. Thus the NACT regime as the party of international corporate capital intervenes with emergency regulations to enforce a rapid liquidation and restructuring of physical and human capital. It rationalises the recovery and rebuilding to suit the now corporatised Canterbury and hinterland economy in the interests of the 21st century landed gentry, and the wider NZ economy in the interests of international capital.

NACT regime will speed up privatisation

Key will use the cost or rebuilding to justify speeding up the privatising of state assets and services. The first target will be the part sale of the SOE (State Owned Enterprises) power generators that currently provide a big dividend to the government. But privatisation is not about economic efficiency, its about the extraction of monopoly rent. Privatising farm land, water, foreshore and seabed (Maori will fail to get any sort economic benefit except a small elite that buys shares in monopoly capital), SOEs, and social services etc., will benefit the NACT regimes international capitalist class backers who will extract big chunks of monopoly rent from NZs land and labor into their increasingly tax free pockets. All of this vindicates the Marxist theory that as capitalism gets more crisis-ridden it can only survive by scavenging the increased destruction of the value of physical and human capital to facilitate the international concentration and relocation of capital to take advantage of cheap resources and labor. The growing gap between rich and poor internationally is but a surface symptom of this process.

What about the workers?

What has the Labour Party to offer the workers whose jobs, houses and lives in Christchurch have been destroyed? Labour was the party of class reconciliation in the age of national capital. The reconciliation only worked while protectionism allowed high profits to pay high wages. The end of the boom in the 1970 ended all that and saw NZ sink into a rapid economic decline as a semi-colony of Australia. In 1984 Labour had no choice but to switch from serving national to international capital. After deregulation class reconciliation became a dream. So Labour has no answers for workers today. As Christchurch workers are liquidated into the reserve army of labor and get pushed around by the state agencies they will become more class conscious and self-reliant. They will look to their own organisations and leaders. So welcome to the new age of labour struggles that match those of the Red Fed a century ago when Christchurch was one of the hotbeds of working class militancy.

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February-March 2011

Libya: Imperialist Hands Off!

The US and EU are planning a military intervention to protect their oil interests!
Libya is on a knife edge poised between victorious workers revolution that can defeat both the dictatorship and imperialism, and turn the Arab Revolution into socialist revolution in the whole region, and the counter-revolution that will halt, reverse and defeat the Arab Revolution and prevent the formation of a United Socialist States of North Africa and the Middle East. The outcome will depend on whether or not the international working class can stop the US and EU imperialists from invading Libya and imposing a new compliant national leadership.
The uprising of unemployed youth has won control of much of the country by sacrificing their lives in the thousands to the Gaddafi dicatorship. Not until the youth had stormed the military base in Benghazi and taken the airport did the Libyan army split and sections of it come over to the rebels. Even then the Generals and Ministers who defected did not take command of

the situation and organise a national popular militia to defeat the regime. This tells us much of the old guard that is thoroughly discredited by its immersion in the dictatorship and which should not be trusted an inch. It has been left to the worker youth who armed themselves and the ranks of the military and other workers who have joined them to form local militias. The gains of the revolution are entirely due to the sacrifice and martrydom of the unemployed working class youth. First in Tunisia to the West where youth laid down their lives to remove the Ben Ali dictatorship. And in Egypt to the East where the youth sufferred more than 1000 martyrs to remove Mubarak. Now the Libyan youth have lost 1000s of dead to seize the leadership of the Arab Revolution. They have led the furious fight that has brought down on them the military might of the Gaddafi regime. Such was the ferocity of this repression, employing the special forces and foreign mercenaries, that its failure to intimidate and defeat the unemployed youth rebellion forced the military to split. The defection of the Generals who had long been cronies of Gaddafi was forced only by the rebellion of the rank and file soldiers who refused to fire on the masses and were in turn executed by the Gaddafi forces. The young workers proved themselves to be the leaders of the workers' revolution and they alone must form the backbone of a national popular militia drawing on the

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workers, the poor farmers and the soldiers. The working class internationally must make the Libyan revolution its own revolution to prevent imperialism from intervening on the pretext of 'humanitarian disaster' to roll back the advance of the revolution and install a new regime that retains the oil wealth for imperialist super-exploitation. In the last analysis, the violence of the reaction of the regime to prevent a revolution at all costs is the creation of imperialism and its subordination of the Arab countries to dictatorships to maintain its economic dominance. In Libya it is unquestionably oil that interests imperialism, and its current concern to stop a 'humanitarian disaster' is entirely motivated to prevent a revolution from coming to power and kicking out its oil companies and socialising Libyan oil for the benefit of the people. We call on the ranks of the army, the airforce and navy who have defected to the opposition to take their place in the popular militia and turn over their weapons, planes and ships to the cause of the revolution.The terrorisation of Tripoli must end. Use the ships to bombard Gaddafi's compound in Tripoli! Use the planes to strafe the armed goons who are driving around in their SUVs murdering unarmed youth with impunity! We call on the Arab revolution that is under way in Egypt and Tunisia, and is beginning to rise up in Algeria and in the Middle East, to immediately send material and military aid to the liberated part of Libya to strengthen the revolution against the regime's extreme repression, to complete the revolution and stop mass murder of workers on an even greater scale. We call on the workers in the imperialist countries to take immediate steps to oppose the military intervention in whatever form in Libya. Imperialism is the No 1 enemy of the Libyan people. Gaddafi is a creature of imperialism. His 1969 revolution had the guise of a national socialist liberation but in reality it installed a national bourgeois crony capitalist regime to serve imperialism. All those who on the left who gave support to Gaddafi in the name of Communism or Trotskyism and were responsible for disarming the Libyan people in their long resistance to Gaddafi must be exposed and condemned. They share a large part of the blame for the failure to build a revolutionary workers party in Libya and the others states of the region to play a leading role in the Arab Revolution.

February-March 2011

No to aerial overflights! No to cynical US, EU and UN military invasion in the name of 'human rights' which are always sacrificed in the interest of the oil monopolies! For international workers support of the Libyan revolution! For material and military aid to the revolutionary working class fighters! For strikes and mutinies to stop any imperialist intervention that will only take over the counterrevolution from Gaddafi and defeat the revolution in Libya and stop it from setting an example for all the world's workers to follow! For an international revolutionary party to coordinate the struggles of workers, youth, poor farmers and street vendors in every country! Forward to the Socialist Revolution in Libya that socialises crony capitalist and imperialist property and creates a genuine socialist plan based on a democratic national assembly of working peoples' committees and militias! Forward to a Socialist United States of North Africa and the Middle East!
Statement of the Liaison Committee of CWG (NZ) and HWRS (USA) 24 February 2011

Imperialist hands off Libya! No to sanctions!

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February-March 2011

Egypt: For Permanent Revolution!

The downfall of Hosni Mubarak and the transfer of power to the Egyptian Military high command, is an important victory for the Egyptian masses who rose up against the 30year old dictatorship. The blood of over 300 martyrs and many thousands killed in under the dictatorship, the idealism of the youth of the April 6th movement; the long battles fought by the industrial workers which led to the current strike wave; the soldiers and officers who joined the opposition; and all those from every class who rallied for 18 days to end the regime, have struck the first blow in the battle for democracy and national independence. This battle so far has proved many things. First it proved that the revolutionary struggle of the masses of poor workers and farmers, joined to the fight of the marginalised youth, can begin to make a revolution. All those who claimed that the age of revolution was over with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and that capitalism had triumphed and declared the End of History, are proven wrong. Imperialism and its client dictators are not evidence of the End of History, but of its impasse. The Egyptian masses stood up after 30 years of dictatorship broke through that impasse and removed the hated dictator. Second, against the liberal commentariat who excitedly rediscovered the semi-colonial masses and praised the miracle of the 'revolution', searching for metaphors and fancy allusions to mask their ignorance, is the flesh and blood proletariat. There was nothing 'miraculous' about this revolution. It was a revival of the national democratic revolution fought against the British, breaking out as a Pan-Arab nationalism under Nasser, but then being pushed backwards by a succession of military regimes subordinated to the neo-colonial rule of US imperialism and its Middle Eastern attackdog, Israel. The re-opening of the Arab national revolution sparked by the Tunisian uprising, proves that this revolution did not fall out of thin-air, that the national revolution has been fomenting for decades, and that of every other national democratic revolution suspended in its tracks by imperialism, is over-ripe for completion. Third, the revived national revolution will have to be completed as an international socialist revolution to realise the demands raised by the mass movement. "Freedom" and "democracy" is not possible in the modern capitalist imperialist world. Neither the military nor any new parliamentary democracy can realise these demands in any single country while imperialism and the national bourgeois regimes rule the nation and the region. The fact that Tunisia sparked off the uprising proves that the revolution has to be based on the pan-Arab masses who are suffering terrible misery, oppression and repression at the nands of imperialism and its local lackey dictatorships. The fact that the US, Israel, and the whole Arab national bourgeoisie from Hamas to the Saudi princes backed Mubarak shows that the forces of the Arab counterrevolution are a real danger to the revolution. Fourth, all of these realities point to the truth that all of the demands raised by the youth and the workers and farmers cannot be won while capitalism and imperialism rules the world. The crisis facing imperialism demands that the workers and farmers of the world pay for the crisis with slave labour, hunger and even death. The most basic demands for a wage, a house and for human rights are incompatible with the survival of imperialism. Just as this revolution was part of a wave of uprisings begun across North Africa and the Middle East, its completion will not be possible without the masses of the imperialist countries turning on their ruling classes to stop armed invasions to suppress the popular revolutions in the Middle East such as that of the Palestinians. The victory of the revived national revolution in Egypt must open up the prospect of the international socialist revolution. To prevent the Egyptian revolution from being overturned by the military or by imperialist counter-revolution, the Arab masses must rise together. To prevent the Arab masses from military defeat by US invasion and Israeli attacks, the workers of the US and EU must strike against the military machines of their ruling class. The images of the millions mobilised in Egypt must become the inspiration for new workers struggles across the world. We must all learn to lose the fear and walk like Egyptians, and not rest until we have completed the revolutionary process that has just begun.

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February-March 2011

USA:

Make the Banks, Finance Houses and Corporate Elite pay!

From Wisconsin & Oakland to Detroit, New York and Cairo Same crisis same fight!
Across the nation the states and localities are incapable of meeting their obligations. The elite and their pitbull, the Tea-Partiers, have targeted the last bastion of union strength, the public workers unions. Today the front line is in Wisconsin but workers know the same crisis in Wisconsin effects us all. The Democrats led by Obama, no less then the Republicans, are bent on destroying the gains made by unionized workers. From the ongoing furloughs effecting 65,000 state workers in California (enforced by labors choice Governor Brown), to the freeze on federal workers pay in the 2012 budget proposal, the Democrats stand firmly on the side of austerity for the workers and the poor and for bail outs and tax breaks for the bankers and corporate elite. Today Arne Duncan announced the only way to save the Detroit schools is to close half of them and increase class size to over 60 students per class; and this, after bailing out GM in a deal that forced down autoworkers wages. The attack in Wisconsin today, the furloughs we still suffer across the nation and Governor Browns proposed 10% cuts in wages, are all part of the corporate elites need to enforce the crisis on the backs of the great majority while the top 1% and their well paid lackeys enjoy bloated stock portfolios, and shiver at the thought that the American workers might learn from the Egyptian workers currently forming unions, occupying factories and throwing out their bosses. Today big capital moves freely across borders, moving funds from the industrialized world to the neo-colonial world where production at the lowest wages possible, inflates Wall Streets profits, leaves the local workers in Dickensian conditions all the while abandoning the industrial and manufacturing base in the first world; which previously afforded the working class the means to view itself as middle class. The free-market today can no longer afford both the profits demanded by the owners of capital and the comforts the misnamed middle class has come to expect: a jobwith benefits, a vacation, a semblance of health care, a defined pension, half-way decent schools, affordable public higher education, affordable gasoline and home heating oil. The tendency of the rate of profit to decline (the law of diminishing returns) has put the squeeze on the corporate bottom line and they, in turn, have no choice- their fiduciary responsibility is to the bottom line and the next quarterly statement.

Union leaderships tie workers to the bosses political parties!

Since the onset of the crisis we have heard the public workers unions leaders set the tone calling on their membership to share the pain. Today in Wisconsin we hear the echo of the share the pain jargon as the union leaders beg for understanding in the media, we are willing to concede on wages their real message is just let us keep the right to take members dues, give funding to the Democrats and prevent the workers from taking strike actions, which might upset the status-quo. These union leaders are entrenched and committed to the lie that there is no money, that cuts are inevitable and that labor has to make concessions even after pouring millions of dollars and volunteer hours into the election of Democrats each election cycle. Just a few weeks ago, SEIU 1000 president Yvonne Walker, speaking on KQED, said she supports Browns proposed pay cut for the 65,000 workers still without a contract. This is no surprise, as it would subject workers in other state unions to the same rotten deal she sold her own members. Selling out private and public sector workers alike is the task taken on by the CA AFL-CIO leaders. Autoworkers will remember when they came down to the NUMMI plant in Hayward during the firing ceremony for 5,000 workers to assure the Democratic politicians, also in attendance, that capital could abandon labor without fear of labor abandoning the Democratic Party. Workers need our own political party one willing to fight, by any and all means, for a workers government committed to human need not to preserving corporate profit.

Fake tax the rich and tax reform scam leave control in the hands of the rich!
Today these same labor leaders are joining with the Democrats again, this time to misdirect our union members into a feckless campaign to advance so-called tax reform instead of mobilizing for what we really need to do to fight back: organize widespread, prolonged strikes and build for long overdue independent political action.

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Labor leaders and fake socialists like Alan Benjamin of Socialist Organizer, and Connie Ford of the SF Labor council have joined forces with the Democrats to demobilize the working class by directing us into useless plans to solve the capitalist crisis on Wall Streets behalf by campaigning for so-called progressive taxation. What this amounts to is the working class telling the capitalist politicians how to administer the collapsing system that is victimizing us all, instead of working to replace it with an economy based on human need not quarterly profits. Calls for tax the rich foster the illusion that the social problems of our country (not to mention the global economic crisis) can be solved by getting wealthy people to pump more tax dollars into government coffers. This begs the question, whose government, and whose interests does it serve? Do the tax the rich proponents really expect us to believe that governments controlled by the plutocracy will spend increased tax dollars on meeting the needs of workers, the poor, and the oppressed? If that were what they wanted to do, they could do it without increasing their own taxes, by calling a halt to their ruinously expensive criminal military adventures in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan; ending aid to Israel and other repressive foreign governments; and ending the billions of dollars spent annually on various forms of corporate welfare. Of course tax the rich reform is not going to be enough. This worldwide economic collapse is much deeper than even the most liberal Keynesians will admit. If the capitalist class could dig themselves out of this hole by simply spending public funds to put people to work, they would. But today it is so hard for the capitalists to make a buck in the market, they have replaced productive activity with what they call financial services, which basically means gambling on speculative bubbles for profit. Equities, real estate, and commodities all have gone through their bubbles as capital chases from one popped balloon to the next super inflated sector. The capitalist class has abandoned the social contract, which read something like this: Allow us (the capitalists) to own the capital and invest it productively, according to the dictates of the market, and (Adam Smith willing) there will be work for everyone, profit will abound, bankers and bakers will all be happy, and the invisible hand of the free market will keep the boat of the economy afloat. Well, that was fine for a short period but today there is too much paper capital seeking a diminishing volume of profit, leading to the cannibalism of the speculators. Seeking paper profits based on inflated values of a non-

February-March 2011
productive economy, western capital has no choice but to collapse the historic gains of the working class, because workers cannot eat, wear, or live on paper profits. To meet the needs of workers and ordinary people, and maintain a healthy economy, the resources of our society must be put to work producing real goods and services, not paper profits from gambling. But capitalism is no longer capable of investing in industrial production in developed countries, because workers relatively high standard of living in those countries means more profit can be made elsewhere. Thus, the only way to direct our resources back into providing real goods and services is to take capital out of the hands of the speculators. This is the historic task of labor one which the leaders of the labor have abandoned. Instead, they convene a conference with the likes of Lenny Goldberg, executive director of the California Tax Reform Association, who favor Browns austerity fake tax reform and increasing the collection of the sales tax from online retailers a regressive measure, as sales taxes are charged at a flat rate to all purchasers regardless of their income. Abandoning the class struggle, the SF Labor Council instead joins with the other labor tops to misdirect workers into putting their efforts behind Browns tax and cut plan, this is a strategy of defeat! Where are the labor leaders who embrace the fight for an indefinite general strike, instead of carrying water for the Democrats? Where are the leaders willing to fight to nationalize the banks and major industries under workers control? Where are the leaders who will mobilize the masses for full employment under the demand 30 hours work for 40 hours pay? Where are the leaders who remind the workers of their historic task, link our struggles to the students, the unemployed, the elderly the homeless, both across the nation and the world? Obviously, they are not in the top ranks of the SF Labor Council, the California AFL-CIO, or the Change to Win leadership. Those folks are too busy celebrating their unholy alliance with Jerry the Butcher to get down to the barricades and wage a real struggle. For labor to win we must revitalize our unions with new leadership ready to fight for the historical interests of the working class, forge an independent fighting workers party preparing to take economic and political power by engaging in internationalist solidarity and class struggle methods! HUMANIST WORKERS FOR REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALISM February 2011

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February-March 2011

Organize in the U.S. and Abroad to Free PFC Bradley Manning NOW!
Bradley Manning, a Private First Class (PFC) in the U.S. military, faces a possible 52 years in federal prison for deeply embarrassing the State Department publicly and exposing the indifference of the U.S. high command to U.S. war crimes. Civilian Defense Department experts have stated and reiterated that national security was not compromised in any way by the leaked diplomatic cables and war crime footage PFC Manning is alleged to have disclosed. However, Manning seems doomed to serve this time for what is alleged to be a crime: damaging national security from the specific political perspective of Secretary of Defense Gates and the praetorian guards of Capital. To begin with, if Bradley Manning is charged by the Article 32 hearing (of the Unified Code of Military Justice), he will most likely be totally doomed by the trick bag he faces in a Court Martial. Here, regulations will have more weight than laws, and hierarchical considerations will outweigh what would be rules of evidence in a civilian case. Gates has spoken and he is the boss. Manning is doomed by the quest for fame of a publicity-seeking hacker, Adrian Lamo, who reportedly claimed he was a Christian minister (Reverend) and would respect Mannings anonymity in accordance with the privilege of Sacramental Confession. Lamo reportedly went on to claim that he was a journalist and told Manning his identity would be protected under the California Shield Law. Apparently, according to Lamo, it was his conscience that told him to set the 22-year-old Bradley up for an F.B.I trap. Sure it was. Bradley Mannings situation is by no means hopeless if a movement in his defense is built on an objectively necessary basis. A movement that is not limited to the capitalist borders of the United States, but is internationalist in scope and linked to world events, such as the present interimperialist collisions with China. In other words, a campaign that challenges the both U.S. capitalist rule at home, and its predatory imperialist ambitions abroad. But instead, a deadended, reformist fundraising effort for a purely legalistic defense of PFC Manning has been organized by pro-Obama ineffectuals. Dead-ended, because their overriding allegiance is to liberal constitutionalist bourgeois rule, following the example of Daniel Ellsberg. The name recognition of these big shot ineffectuals derives from the the Great Society era, when they went Part of the way with LBJ. Humanist Workers for Revolutionary Socialism is a Marxist workers organization. From our perspective, Obama will not lift a finger for Bradley Manning or any other antiwar G.I. We must repeat again and again the truth that Obama has never been an antiwar candidate. He is a war president as much as Johnson, or Nixon or Bush Sr./Jr., even as he pretends to wind up the two active fronts in the war on terror. Iraq and Afghanistan will now the locations for new puppet state bases that can provide logistical support, and direct U.S. forces in future proxy wars including all-out war with rapidly expanding Chinese imperialism! At some point, Obama will simply make a deal with some of the leaders of the forces now opposing U.S. troops in the field for what they believe to be their own reasons. Then he will declare the Taliban defeated, Al Qaeda defeated, and so forth, just as Bush declared mission accomplished. The mission will be Chinese containment and/or containment of Chinas allies. We fight all imperialisms, the spawn of the capitalist system, which is now in its death throes, even as China, a former deformed workers state, now heads for its number one place in the imperialist sun. We see our main enemy, the declining U.S. capitalist class, taking increasingly desperate diplomatic and military steps to contain Chinese commercial and military ambitions, such as the string of pearls, Chinas overseas naval/military bases. Obama and his entire spectrum of supporters either hope that you ignore the true facts behind the increasingly sharp inter-imperialist collisions, or that you begin to fall into line with the patriotic war-mongering American chauvinism which is beginning to rear its ugly head. We repeat once again the words of Karl Marx, that the working class has no fatherland. We see another program, other tasks, for the draftees of the U.S. military, for ourselves, and for the whole labor movement, made aware of the revolutionary role history has reserved for us! Freeing Bradley Manning and defeating the imperialists drive for wider and larger wars require militant, mass labor actions. Resolutions of Labor Councils are clearly not enough, and neither will pacifist demonstrations compel the military beast to drop all charges, exonerate and free antiwar G.I.s. We call for explicit walkouts and strikes! For military and diplomatic defeat of U.S. imperialist war aims, overt and covert! Free Bradley Manning! Demand his exoneration and honorable discharge! For Teamster, Longshore, Transportation (rail), Machinist (airline) and military walkouts and strikes for freedom for Bradley Manning and all class war prisoners! For an Enlisted Servicepersons Union, such as the Armed Forces Union-COSATU of South Africa. For mass G.I. meetings to discuss legal and illegal orders and war crimes! For a Troops Out! movement, with full AFL-CIO endorsement and support. For a fighting Labor Party, based on renewed militant unions, controlled by the rank and file, and linked to the organizations of the oppressed. For the survival of humanity and all life from the avoidable environmental disasters capitalism has in store for us in its death agony! Nature cries out to us: hear its pleas! For a mighty Fourth International, World Party of Socialist Revolution, refounded and rededicated to its original programme, principles and statutes! Lets outlive this murderous system. Make a start by freeing PFC Bradley Manning!

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February-March 2011

U.S. : General Strike: Wisconsin or Nationwide - Limited or Indefinite

Should the call for a general strike be nationwide, or for Wisconsin alone?
HWRS has joined with others who have called for a general strike in response to the attacks on unionized public workers in Wisconsin and elsewhere. Some others who consider themselves socialists (e.g., David H., in a Facebook discussion) have asserted, however, that the call for a nationwide strike today is ultra-left, and reminiscent of the IWW, which has forever been calling for a general strike as the answer to all things. Why not just call for socialism? these folks ask. After all, we base the call for the nationwide general strike on objective necessity, and, as they correctly point out, socialism is the objective necessity - so why not? The Marxist method is to advocate, agitate and propagandize for actions and demands that are commanded by the objective conditions, and not to limit ourselves or the working class to what appears to be objectively possible in this moment given the limitations of the subjective consciousness of the masses. The dialectic teaches us that change is the basic law of the universe, and that consciousness itself is subject to this law. As consciousness is mutable, our intention is to insert into the changing consciousness of the masses the keys that can open remove the padlocks restricting their subjective understanding. Limited actions, dependence on the courts, elections

and the assertion that we need to share the pain by accepting concessionary deals are used by the labor fakers to keep the consciousness of the working class tied to the middle class American dream. But what Wall Street knows and the labor fakers do not, is that capitalism can no longer deliver that so-called dream. That dream today is a nightmare. Witness the theme of the recent solidarity rallies for Wisconsin , such as the one held in San Francisco on February 28. They were sponsored by Move-On.org in conjunction with the local labor councils, and the theme they chose was "save the middle class American dream." The entrenched bureaucracy is running from the term working class, just as they run from the general strike (witness the failure of a resolution in support of a general strike at the San Francisco Labor Council). Instead, they keep trying to sell us their share the pain strategy, all the while promoting fear in order to keep us in the Democrats pocket and thereby prevent the emergence of independent working class political action. Such independent action, may take a variety of forms as the class struggle deepens, such as a formation of a fighting workers/labor party, the formation of mass popular/working class assemblies, and/or the emergence of a consciously revolutionary workers, party. In contrast to the Saturday Move-on.org rally, we also attended the support rally (two weeks ago) in Oakland at the State Building . There, Jack Heyman of the ILWU called for a general strike, and within moments all 300 participants were chanting "general strike ... general

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strike!" The sentiment would be the same at the other rallies if the platform were open and a speaker could address the workers with that message. But the other major support rallies we know about were conducted by the Democrats and their friendly union leaders who run from the idea of any strike let alone a general strike. The class struggle draws the masses into motion, looking for both strategic and tactical answers to the historic situation. Our strategy is class independence and self-activity, and our tactics must reveal a road to a resolution of the crisis in favor of the working classs historic interest the consolidation of power into its collective hands and the formation of a workers state; otherwise, they are mere sloganeering. Tactics may change from day to day, and we may retreat or advance, dependent on the fighting spirit of the masses and the relationship of forces. Today, the tactic of general strike is being put on the agenda by the objective conditions. The subjective factor in history (a self-aware working class) needs to consider how to use this tactic successfully. This requires discussion of making such a strike indefinite and nationwide.

February-March 2011
today (3/10/11) we read that the President of the Madison fire fighters advocates for a General Strike. Washington has nothing to offer. The congress is in deadlock, and this august body of capitalist politicians itself threatens to shut down the government! They call it a deadlock; we call it a lockout! In Wisconsin , Walker threatens mass firing of public workers, and today his party has skirted even a semblance of democracy to pass the anti-union bill. The general strike is our answer; with it we fight for control of the work and the workplace, as the bosses have shown they are no longer capable either of administering the work process, or of guaranteeing the product - which, in the case of public work, is providing services (education, health & safety, roads, transit, home care etc.) to the people. WE DO THE WORK! Advocacy for a general strike, today, exposes the incapability of the existing union leaderships to guide the working class to victory. The call for the general strike puts them on notice that we know they do not have a strategy or tactics that can resolve the crisis in the interest of the working class. Our strategy is to take every step with the masses toward greater and greater self expression of the historic interest of the working class. The tactics we use must rely on workers' self organization, united front action, and international workers solidarity needed to win. The emergence of a general strike poses the question of which class should run society: the capitalists or the workers. As the crisis becomes more acute and it becomes apparent that capital cannot resolve the crisis, it is the job of revolutionary socialists to patiently explain how only a workers government can create an economy that meets the peoples needs. All the hurdles in the way need to be consciously considered by mass assemblies of workers and popular forums, run on the principles of workers democracy. The task at hand is to convene and turn solidarity actions into popular/worker/labor assemblies that meet everywhere to plan and prepare for a nationwide general strike. Local assemblies should delegate strike committees of the activists in the ranks to go to all worksites to organize meetings, help establish rankand-file committees, caucuses, and networks, and enlist support for the strike to build locally and regionally before setting the date for the big one. Our strategy is workers' self-activity and solidarity! Such organizational developments are the very foundational organizations needed for the formation of a workers, government that can administer the economy in the common interests of the masses. We know there can be no local victory in Wisconsin - we are all in this together - it will take all of us to win!

Our task is to exploit the cracks in consciousness

The consciousness of the working class in America is changing under the pressure of deteriorating material conditions. Old prejudices and illusions in the American dream are daily being crushed under the weight of unfulfilled expectations. In Wisconsin , Ohio , Idaho , Indiana , and across the nation, the public workers have been pushed up against a wall and have become todays front line in the attack by the corporate elite and ideological capitalist politicians to crush the unions - public and private alike. The outcome of this struggle is decisive for the entire working class. Either the workers' movement will prevail, and based on this victory a sense of revitalization will swell the ranks of labor with a new spirit to turn the tide, or the capitalists will be victorious, and will take their campaign from state to state and pick the unions to the bone, crushing the working class. For big capital, this is a nationwide attack; for the working class, the response must be nationwide as well. Workers are starting to question the efficacy of the strategy and tactics of the current crop of labor fakers. As workers find that their dependence on the Democrats, even coupled with their endless daily protests, candle light vigils and pajama parties in the Capitol Rotunda, have not produced the desired results, they will be looking for working solutions. For example,

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By counterposing traditional working class methods of struggle to the labor fakers class collaboration with the Democratic party, we expose them for what they are, while creating an opening for a revival of rank and file militancy and democracy. At this moment, following the massive working class upsurge in North Africa, workers are watching and are more open than in decades to the only real power tool we have - our ability to withhold labor power. But the workers have been held back by generations of entrenched traitorous class collaborationist leaders. Every time a worker mentions strike, these labor fakers and bureaucrats think, how do I get out of this or they whisper back, Taft Hartley or call the union lawyers in to tell the workers what we cant do! But what they offer - reliance on the Democrats and dependence on courts, lobbying and immediately offering concessions - is not working. They have not even managed to accomplish passage of the Employee Free Choice Act - yet another broken campaign promise by the Democrats. Meanwhile, workers are going into their third year of furloughs in California , foreclosures continue, unemployment is unabated and we are hurting! As objective conditions change, the logical conclusion of masses of workers inner balance sheets will scream out that we need to build class solidarity, defeat anti-labor roadblocks like Taft Hartley through strike action, drive out the entrenched labor fakers and build a independent working class party prepared to fight for a workers government.

February-March 2011
attacks; Rhode Island sending out pink slips to 2000 teachers; Detroit closing half its schools; and a ballot measure in California being concocted to scrap public workers' unions - this issue is not provincial. Continuing unemployment, cuts to home heating subsidies by the Obama administration, and rising gas prices at the pump all hurt working people and their families, while oil profits go through the roof. These conditions drive commuting workers, the unemployed, and working and poor families with subsidized heat into the camp of labor and the general strike. The movement for the general strike will by necessity address all these issues or it will fail to build the solidarity and make the organizational advances the working class needs to win! Even in states where capital hasnt yet attacked the workers, it is only a matter of time, unless the spread of this new round of government union-busting is prevented by an immense strike wave and/or a successful popular uprising. A loss in Wisconsin , Indiana and Ohio today would be a crushing defeat, equivalent to PATCO, for the American working class. Considering the proportion of black workers and women in the public service sector, this will result in a disproportionate and devastating economic impact on them, and on the sectors of the working class community that are dependent on their income. A crushing defeat for the American worker will further consolidate the rule of the right, while distancing us from the international workers' movement, which today looks with great hope at the American worker waking up in Wisconsin . Across the planet, workers know that to remove the jackboot of imperialism from their neck, the American workers must arrest the rule of Wall Street and the big finance capital.

The conditions are ripe for a regional general strike to spread

The call for a general strike in Wisconsin is agitation, as it is (or can be put) on the agenda today as a response to a direct attack. The battle is heightened right now and either will escalate to full blown strike action or will be put back to sleep by these very same Democratic trade union leaders who promise they are willing to sell the members out on wages, health care and pension contributions. If the situation escalates to the level of a general strike in Wisconsin , two things are sure: 1) the masses will not be content to accept the concessions their sell-out leaders are peddling today; and 2) if the strike is not indefinite, and does not spread across state lines, the Wisconsin workers will be isolated and defeated. With Michigan, Indiana , Ohio , and Idaho facing similar

Confronting old limitations and roadblocks

The path to victory in Wisconsin is via general strike, but we must not shortchange the workers by ignoring what it will take to win. It must be explained that in order to win, ties to the Democrats and the entrenched labor fakers need to be broken. A new militant rank and file leadership committed to class struggle methods and class independence must be forged, and must fight for and win leadership. Without ousting the bureaucracy and reclaiming the unions as democratic unions run by the most militant workers, the general strike will not happen! These are the major political and organizational lessons the rank and file needs to digest and act upon before it can successfully launch and implement the general strike.

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The natural alliance between public and private sector workers, the unemployed, the students, and the recipients of social services must become the backbone of the strike. The entire working class and other oppressed people need to come together into popular assemblies to discuss developing strategy and tactics and, in turn, take action. In these mobilizations and assemblies, we must explain the role of the labor tops and what to do to replace them, as well as the role of the Democrats and how to break from them. In this forum, we will argue that a strike needs to be indefinite and must spread to the other states or risk being isolated and defeated. In the event that the Wisconsin workers advance toward launching a general strike, they must be shown by solidarity actions that they are not alone, that they are fighting for all workers rights. To link the entire working class we will argue that a counterattack is in order. We fight against concessions, and to extend jobs with union benefits for all. Those states where public workers have no union rights should be targeted and organized by the revitalized union movement. We demand that the bosses be made to pay for the crisis of capitalism. We will demand 30 hours work for 40 hours pay to end unemployment! We demand implementation of a sliding scale of wages and prices. We will demand the nationalization of finance capital and the major industries, without indemnification and that they be administered under workers control and self management. Strike committees and picket lines will need to be transformed into the armed self defense committees of the working class and its initiatives. Police and right wing citizens committees historically (Seattle 1919, Minneapolis 1934, S.F. 1934, Egypt 2011) mobilize violent attacks on the general strikes. We will warn the workers that the police are not workers, that their roll is to protect and serve capitalist control; we must not be fooled by their feigned alliance with workers demonstrations because as class struggle deepens they will be put to the work of crushing the general strike. For individuals or groups of police to support the workers movement they must arrest their officers and put their arms under the control of the workers popular organizations. In Egypt the workers sacked the police stations and seized their arms.

February-March 2011
We must also explain that the general strike is not a panacea, it is a tactic. It does not lead directly to workers' socialist revolution; indeed, without revolutionary leadership it can lead to defeat. We have seen limited general strikes used across Europe last year as a pressure relief valve to allow the working class to blow off steam. There we have seen the Social Democrats and Communists refuse to coordinate the strikes Europe-wide, and we have seen them limit their duration and the workers militancy. So we know the general strike, if led by class collaborationists, can lead to defeat, demobilization, and demoralization. Our job is to take these lessons to the class: point clearly at the roadblocks, and prepare the class to confront, go around, over or through them. Every step toward a general strike advances the class consciousness of the American worker. Lessons from the process itself will spread, and be the basis for the working class taking power in its own name. The struggle is one for the consciousness of the working class. We are at an ah hah! moment, where workers can break from the stranglehold of bourgeois consciousness offered by the friends of labor and their stooges in the labor movement. As Leninists, we do not refrain from explaining what is needed in its entire nuance. Rather, we utilize the method of the 1850 Address to the Workingmens International, the method of the first five years of the Communist International, and the Transitional Program of the Fourth International. One crucial lesson is that a revolutionary workers' party is needed for the class to be victorious. But the absence of such a party in the United States today is no excuse to stand down; the struggle to build for a general strike, as it emerges, demands that the struggle for a revolutionary party be taken into the heat of the confrontation. It is out of these battles that the party will be built; and it will be the contributions of a revolutionary party that will guide the class to victory. To refrain from explaining the need for a general strike to be launched in Wisconsin , and to become indefinite and nationwide, would be to abandon the class to those elements (the Democrats and their fake socialist friends) who insist it is impossible and/or will fail.

HWRS Humanist Workers for Revolutionary Socialism

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February-March 2011

Zimbabwe: Release the 52 Comrades! Drop all Charges!

The International Socialist Organization of Zimbabwe (ISO-Z) condemns in the highest possible manner the arrest of the 52 comrades and demands their immediate release and dropping of the so called treason charges.
The arrest by the ZANU controlled security machinery clearly exposes the fear of elements of the imperialist controlled Government of National Unity (GNU) and this must be seen as an attempt at pre-empting any action by the working people as a response to the growing exploitation and degeneration of the capitalist imperialist system that has ruined the lives of so many. ZANU is really afraid of the repetition here of events still rocking the middle east and promising to engulf the rest of Africa, that has seen Mubarak go and the imminent fall of Gaddafi. On its part the MDC is desperate to control any regime change agenda and is wary of mass protests which it knows will go beyond its neo-liberal capitalist agenda and demand an end to the capitalist system. Its obscene that the police could arrest people over a video session and claim that it was a meeting to plot the downfall of the falling coalition regime that has been seriously discredited in the eyes of the workers, students, peasants and the urban poor. But what is revealing is that the regime is so fearful to the extent of harassing groups bent on eliminating only the worst features of capitalism and therefore act as the left leg of the regime in its delicate attempt to manage the economy for both the US and Chinese imperialism. 18

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The political alliance by the main political parties, out of political calculations, clearly fails to offer any respite to the masses in this country. ZANU (PF) working on behalf of emerging Chinese imperialism was forced into any alliance with the US/UK sponsored MDC party in order first to resolve the worst aspects of imperialism and therefore stall popular action by the masses as well as best prepare each party for exclusive rule. To all intents and purposes this alliance can be

February-March 2011
salvaging the capitalist system and learn from the recent uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt where the protests where controlled by groups seeking only regime change and giving room to imperialism to determine the nature of the end result which will invariably see the continuation of the inhuman economic exploitation. The working class must adopt a revolutionary program that guides it towards the conquering of political power as a means to socialize the means of production and ensure a decent life for all. As ISO (Z) we pose the following demands as a means of resolving the national question in the context of the global economic crisis:

best described as a ZANU based coalition government with ZANU firmly in control of the security machinery, the judiciary, the SADC grouping and the emerging lucrative diamond industry. Hardliners in ZANU are calling for an end to this settlement arguing that the original goals of using the MDC to stabilize the economy and decapacitating opposition have been achieved. On its part the MDC is in a serious dilemma as witnessed by its ambivalence on the constitutional reform process which has been dominated by ZANU using its control of the security apparatus and better organizing skills. The call for elections has exposed the MDC which knows that any election that ZANU has to win will invariable be characterized by violence and rigging even in the presence of a SADC brokered roadmap on elections. With ZANU stalwarts now controlling about 30% of the commercial land and their conversion into a national elite it is impossible to imagine an electoral defeat for ZANU and all it has to do is adopt a scenario midway between the March 29 elections and the 27 June run off that will allow for minimum electoral reform coupled by less severe coercive measures. This brief scenario exposes the inability of capitalism to resolve the crisis in favor of the working class and its allies in this age of global imperialist degeneration. The masses must organize and pose demands that go beyond

1. A sliding scale of wages and prices. 2. Price controls on all basic goods and services. 3. No to privatization of state companies and the nationalization of key sectors of the economy especially the banking sector in order to fund agriculture and mining. 4. Redistribution of all land to poor peasants without compensation. 5. Initiation of state projects to employ the unmployed. 6. Convening of a working peoples convention made up of delegates of workers committees, peasants representatives, students representatives, neighborhood committees and the rank and file of the military to write a new constitution. 7. Creation of an armed workers government to fulfil the above demands as the national bourgeoisie cannot defeat imperialism. 8. No to US led and Chinese imperialism that has ravaged the lives of the masses. 9. No to reformism, opportunism and sectarianism. 10. No to Stalinism and fake Trotskyism. 11. Build a revolutionary ISO (Z) as part of a revolutionary international. 12. For a strong revolutionary international center. 13. A revolution in Southern Africa and Africa as part of the international revolution. ISO-Z National Executive Committee [Ed Note: the members of this group broke from the original ISO-Z in 2009 but continue to use that name while it refounds it program.] 25 FEBRUARY 2011 19

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February-March 2011

What We Fight For

Overthrow Capitalism
Historically, capitalism expanded world-wide to free much of humanity from the bonds of feudal or tribal society, and developed the economy, society and culture to a new higher level. But it could only do this by exploiting the labour of the productive classes to make its profits. To survive, capitalism became increasingly destructive of "nature" and humanity. In the early 20th century it entered the epoch of imperialism in which successive crises unleashed wars, revolutions and counter-revolutions. Today we fight to end capitalisms wars, famine, oppression and injustice, by mobilising workers to overthrow their own ruling classes and bring to an end the rotten, exploitative and oppressive society that has exceeded its use-by date. inequality, injustice, anarchy and barbarism of capitalism in crisis, led by a revolutionary Marxist party, produces a revolutionary class-consciousness.

For a Revolutionary Party

The bourgeois and its agents condemn the Marxist party as totalitarian. We say that without a democratic and a centrally organised party there can be no revolution. We base our beliefs on the revolutionary tradition of Bolshevism and Trotskyism. Such a party, armed with a transitional program, forms a bridge that joins the daily fight to defend all the past and present gains won from capitalism, to the victorious socialist revolution. Defensive struggles for bourgeois rights and freedoms, for decent wages and conditions, will link up the struggles of workers of all nationalities, genders, ethnicities and sexual orientations, bringing about movements for workers control, political strikes and the arming of the working class, as necessary steps to workers' power and the smashing of the bourgeois state. Along the way, workers will learn that each new step is one of many in a long march to revolutionise every barrier put in the path to the victorious revolution.

Fight for Socialism

By the 20th century, capitalism had created the preconditions for socialism a world-wide working class and modern industry capable of meeting all our basic needs. The potential to eliminate poverty, starvation, disease and war has long existed. The October Revolution proved this to be true, bringing peace, bread and land to millions. But it became the victim of the combined assault of imperialism and Stalinism. After 1924 the USSR, along with its deformed offspring in Europe, degenerated back towards capitalism. In the absence of a workers political revolution, capitalism was restored between 1990 and 1992. Vietnam and China then followed. In the 21sst century only Cuba and North Korea survive as degenerate workers states. We unconditionally defend these states against capitalism and fight for political revolution to overthrow the bureaucracy as part of world socialism.

Fight for Communism

Communism stands for the creation of a classless, stateless society beyond socialism that is capable of meeting all human needs. Against the ruling class lies that capitalism can be made "fair" for all; that nature can be "conserved"; that socialism and communism are "dead"; we raise the red flag of communism to keep alive the revolutionary tradition of the' Communist Manifesto of 1848, the Bolshevik-led October Revolution; the Third Communist International until 1924, the revolutionary Fourth International up to 1940 before its collapse into centrism. We fight to build a new, Fifth, Communist International, as a world party of socialism capable of leading workers to a victorious struggle for socialism.

Defend Marxism
While the economic conditions for socialism exist today, standing between the working class and socialism are political, social and cultural barriers. They are the capitalist state and bourgeois ideology and its agents. These agents claim that Marxism is dead and capitalism need not be exploitative. We say that Marxism is a living science that explains both capitalisms continued exploitation and its attempts to hide class exploitation behind the appearance of individual "freedom" and "equality". It reveals how and why the reformist, Stalinist and centrist misleaders of the working class tie workers to bourgeois ideas of nationalism, racism, sexism and equality. Such false beliefs will be exploded when the struggle against the

Class Struggle is the bi-Monthly paper of the

Communist Workers Group of New Zealand/Aotearoa, in a Liaison Committee with Humanist Workers for Revolutionary Socialism. Email cwg006@yahoo.com http://redrave.blogspot.com http://communistworker.blogspot.com

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